Before he could say anything to Angela, a sober-faced woman immediately ushered them both into the principal’s office and shut the door behind them. They sat in wooden chairs before the principal’s old wooden desk. Mr. Ericsson drummed his fingers on the desk as he scowled.
“You’re Mr. Constantine? Angela’s grandfather?”
“That’s right. What’s she done?”
Mr. Ericsson cast Angela a dirty look before turning his attention back to her grandfather.
“She put another girl in the hospital, that’s what she’s done. Broke bones in her face. She’s going to require surgery.”
Her grandfather turned toward Angela, looking at her without saying anything. He didn’t need to say anything. She knew what the look meant.
“On my way home, three older girls stopped me in the parking lot of the liquor store on Barlow Street,” she explained to her grandfather. “They called me names. I tried to walk away but the biggest one punched me in the stomach. It hurt so much it made me vomit. When I was down on the ground she kicked me hard in the side and I heard her tell the other two to mess me up good. I knew they were going to hurt me bad. I knew I couldn’t outrun them.
“So I came up and planted my boot hard as I could in the face of the girl who had hit me. She went down. There was a lot of confusion and screaming. I went home.”
Her grandfather gave her a nod, looking relieved by her answer. He turned back to the principal.
“What are we doing here? Have you called us in to file some kind of charges against these three girls?”
The principal’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Mr. Constantine, Angela hurt another girl badly enough to put her in the hospital. We’re expelling Angela from school.”
Her grandfather frowned. “Expelling her? Why? You just heard her. She was defending herself. Had she not put that girl down, then the three of them would probably have put Angela in the hospital, if not worse.”
“Mr. Constantine, we have a zero-tolerance policy against violence.”
“Violence? It wasn’t violence,” her grandfather said in a calm voice. “It was self-preservation.”
Mr. Ericsson sat back and laced his fingers together on top of his prominent belly. “Angela put another girl in the hospital. We can’t tolerate such violence. That’s why she is being expelled.”
“Are you expelling the other three girls?”
He looked confused. “No, of course not. Why would we? Don’t you understand? They were the ones Angela hurt. One of them, anyway.”
A dark look came over Vito’s face. “So you’re defending the violent girls who attacked Angela and you’re punishing her for being their victim.”
“Well, no, that’s not exactly—”
“Did you ever see someone’s head split open like a melon on concrete?”
The principal’s face paled. “Why, no, but what does that—”
“I was a safety steward with my union for sixteen years. We worked around concrete surfaces all day. I saw a deliveryman slip on something one day and fall back. He hit the back of his head on a concrete curb. It cracked his skull. He was on a respirator for two weeks before his family pulled the plug. I was there that day when his heart beat for the last time.
“I saw to it that there were new rules that everyone had to wear a safety helmet anywhere on the jobsite at all times, not just the men mixing mud or laying block and brick.
“When those girls attacked Angela, they could easily have knocked her down and she could have hit her head on a concrete curb in that parking lot. She could have been left an invalid for the rest of her life. She could have died.”
“Well, the chances of—”
“Look at her. Look how thin she is. A bigger, stronger person punching a girl like Angela in the gut could easily have ruptured an artery and she could have bled internally and died in agonizing pain. Any number of serious injuries could have resulted from that kind of blow to the abdomen. This wasn’t some other girl in her class pulling her hair or throwing a spitball at her, this was a much bigger person—three of them—attacking her with the clear intent of hurting her.
“Angela didn’t set out to hurt them. She tried to get away. She was attacked. She defended herself.”
Mr. Ericsson fell back on the only line he knew. “But violence of any kind is strictly—”
Vito folded his arms. “So your policy at this school is to protect bullies? Your policy is that Angela should let herself be hurt, maybe very badly, possibly even murdered, rather than defend herself. Is that about the sum of it?”
The principal had clearly expected contrition. He was rattled that he wasn’t getting it. “I don’t think you understand what—”
“I think you should think very carefully about what kind of harm could come from your decision, today. What kind of message it would send to other thugs and their victims.”
Angela’s grandfather had an intimidating glare that went with a voice that, without him even raising it, could make the blood drain from people’s faces.
Mr. Ericsson wet his lips several times and averted his eyes before he spoke.
“Considering the circumstances and what Angela had to say explaining her actions, I think it best if we drop the whole thing about expelling Angela.”
“Yes, I think that would be best for all concerned.”
“But Mr. Constantine, I must tell you, Angela needs to buckle down,” Mr. Ericsson said, changing the subject. Angela had apparently already been on his radar. “She scored the highest IQ scores we’ve ever recorded at this school. Did you know that?”
“No, she never told me.”
“Well, she did. And yet her grades are subpar. She’s barely passing. She has great potential but she isn’t applying herself. Maybe if she worked harder and tried harder to fit in she wouldn’t have to defend herself in the first place. I mean, just look at the way she dresses, at those boots she wears.”
Vito lifted a leg and thunked his boot down on the desk. “What’s wrong with her boots?”
Mr. Ericsson stared a moment at the lugged sole of the boot on his desk before looking up into Vito’s glare. “Well … nothing. That’s not really my point. My point is that she needs to apply herself.”
Angela didn’t care about applying herself. When the teachers put problems up on the blackboard, she grasped the entire problem and the answer all at the same time. It bored her to tears waiting for the other kids to figure it out, or waiting while the teachers painstakingly walked other kids through what Angela had seen in the first instant. Her mind would wander away. She didn’t feel she needed to go through the motions of explaining it, so she didn’t. She knew the answer, and to her mind that was what mattered.
“And I must tell you, this isn’t the first time. That’s one reason you’re here. She’s fought with other girls before.”
“I know about that,” her grandfather said. “That’s all been petty kid stuff, just kids tussling. We’re not here to talk about petty stuff, or her grades.
“We’re here today because three older girls tried to hurt Angela.”
“Mr. Constantine, you have to understand my—”
Her grandfather leaned in, his glare darkening. “We’re here today to talk about what I should do about you causing yet more harm to Angela.”
The principal, his face pale, finally cleared his throat.
“Mr. Constantine, I already told you that after having heard the explanation—which I had been totally unaware of—I can see that there is no need to expel your daughter.”
“And you are going to suspend the girls who attacked her for a week and tell their parents why.” It wasn’t a question.
Mr. Ericsson glanced briefly at Angela. “Well, I guess that would be the right thing to do.”
“Yes it would.”
Mr. Ericsson leaned forward, folding his hands on his desk. “I’m glad we’ve been able to clear up this matter, but I must insist that you see to it that she buckles down and appli
es herself because—”
“Let me tell you what has been cleared up today, Mr. Ericsson. I’m not sure this school is a safe environment for Angela, or for that matter any other decent children. It’s clear that you don’t have a policy to protect children from becoming the victims of abuse.
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, now. I’m suspending you and your school from Angela’s life for a week to give you time to reflect on how you are going to correct the situation.”
The principal blinked. “What? You’re pulling her out of school?”
“For a week. That will give you a chance to straighten things out. If I have to come back here again I will expel you from her life permanently. Are we clear?”
The principal swallowed. “Quite clear, Mr. Constantine.”
In the car on the way home her grandfather rode in silence for a time before he looked over at her. “I’m proud of you for standing up for yourself and not letting those girls hurt you.”
“Thanks, Grandpa.”
He mulled something over before speaking again.
“I know you’re smart, Angela. I don’t need any test to tell me that. So, don’t you think you ought to use those smarts of yours? Apply yourself? Smarts can help you in life, you know.”
Angela thought a moment. “Mom’s boyfriends offer me drugs and booze all the time. They try to get me to take a hit off their crack pipes, or snort a line with them. They wanted to show me how to shoot up some of what they called the good stuff. I always tell them no, and to leave me alone.”
She didn’t say anything else.
Her grandfather got the point and smiled to himself. “I guess you do use those smarts of yours.”
TWELVE
When they got to the house in town, Vito told Gabriella to get things together, that they were going to go stay out at the cabin for a time. She asked why, what had happened, and what about school.
“Nothing much,” he told her. “Angela was jumped by three bigger girls and she defended herself. I thought it would be safer if I pulled her out of school for a week so things can cool down.”
Once they got to the cabin, her grandparents went into the bedroom and shut the door. She could hear them calmly discussing something, but she didn’t know what. Her grandparents were very close. They shared everything. Sometimes it seemed they could have an entire conversation just by looking at each other. Angela suspected that Vito was telling Gabriella about the girls who had attacked her, and what she had done to one of them.
When they came out, instead of going hiking or fishing, her grandfather pulled a small handgun out of the cabinet where he kept his guns. He checked that it was empty and then handed the gun to Angela.
“This is a Walther P22. You’re plenty old enough to start learning to use it. I realize, now, that I should have been teaching you all along how to defend yourself.
“You did good, this time, Angela, and you weren’t hurt, but when I looked at you sitting there next to me as you told me about how you had been jumped by those bigger girls, I was struck by how small and vulnerable you still are. Not just to bigger kids but to people like …”
Frankie.
He didn’t say it, but that’s what he meant.
Frankie had vanished, but that didn’t mean that men like him were no longer a threat. She knew there would always be men like him. She’d heard the police tell her mother on more than one occasion that she needed to stop hanging around with the wrong crowd.
To Angela’s mind, her mother wasn’t hanging around with the wrong crowd. Her mother was the wrong crowd.
“Anyway,” her grandfather went on, “you’re growing up fast and one of these days you’ll be on your own.” He put four boxes of ammunition in her other hand. “I won’t always be there to watch over you and help you out.”
Angela didn’t like that thought.
She had watched him practice shooting a number of times, but he mostly did it when she wasn’t there. She always thought that it was a grown-up thing. She was growing up and ready take on more responsibility. Growing up also meant she understood dangers she had never grasped as a little girl. With her grandfather wanting to teach her to shoot, she suddenly felt older, more mature, and acutely aware of the dangers not just at her mother’s trailer, but out in the world—even at school.
“We’re going to shoot those four boxes today, and we’re going to try to shoot every day until you can shoot the wings off a gnat. That will take time and a great deal of practice, but it will be worth it to have a skill you will carry with you your whole life. Do you think you’re up to the challenge?”
Angela smiled up at him. “Yes.”
She liked how well the Walther fit in her hand. She’d seen her grandfather use bigger guns. She liked this one.
“Is this gun big enough? I mean, you know, to protect myself?”
“Assassins of every stripe use a twenty-two as their gun of choice.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because it’s a smaller bullet so it won’t overpenetrate. It won’t go through people and then through walls. But to be fatal it has to go in the right place. If you put a twenty-two in the right place it kills instantly. Shot placement is more important than the size of the bullet. That’s why assassins are so successful with it—because they’re expert shots.
“Putting the bullet where it needs to go takes a lot of practice. Is that something you think you’re ready to take on?”
With a serious look, Angela nodded.
“You be careful,” her grandmother said as they headed for the door. “You do as your grandfather says so you will be safe.”
“I will, Grandma.”
Her grandfather gave her a set of electronic ear-protector headphones that shut out the sound of gunshots, but not the sound of talking. That day she shot all four boxes of ammunition. Loading bullets by pushing them into magazines left her thumb sore, but the excitement of learning something new, something so serious and adult, made it more than worth it.
They spent that first day and many a day after that practicing nothing but holding the gun rock steady as she fired it into a cliff as a backdrop. Her grandfather wouldn’t let her aim at anything. She had trouble holding the gun still, and she flinched in anticipation of the recoil.
It was months before he was satisfied with the way she could unfailingly fire off rounds, fast or slow, with the gun remaining dead still until the round fired, and then after the recoil it immediately returned to the ready position.
Her grandfather told her stories from the news about people, mostly young women, who had been abducted, and how their remains had been found after they had been held captive, tortured, and murdered. These were real people it had happened to.
She knew that he wasn’t trying to scare her. He was trying to make target shooting relevant. He was trying to impress upon her the importance of practice. Angela took everything her grandfather said seriously.
Once she learned to hold the gun rock steady he started having her shoot at a paper target tacked to a stump. She shot countless paper targets to pieces.
Once she could reliably hit the bull’s-eye, he brought out something she had seen him use a few times in the past when he practiced. It was a target contraption of some kind he had made himself out of parts from junkyards.
The target machine had a heavy metal base with gears and a coil spring. A metal rod stuck up from that heavy base. At about eye level there was a metal triangle welded to the end of the rod. When he wound it up with a key in the base, the rod would wobble and swing from side to side, and back and forth, over an area of several feet.
“There’s a reason the target is a triangle,” he told her. “Do you know the reason?”
Angela squinted up at him. “To make it harder to hit?”
“In a way,” he said. “A twenty-two can easily kill a man, even a big man. Remember when I told you that shot placement was important?”
Angela nodded. “I remember.”
&nbs
p; “Well, you see, if you hit a man with a twenty-two at the top of his forehead, or off to the side, the bullet will likely glance off the hard bone of his skull without doing much harm. That won’t stop him.”
“So, you need to aim for his heart?”
He made a face as he considered. “If you had a bigger-caliber gun, certainly. But a twenty-two could glance off the rib cage and not get to his heart. If the guy is big and tough, a twenty-two going into his body without hitting something vital like his heart probably wouldn’t stop him. With someone on drugs they probably wouldn’t even feel it. They might die in a few hours from internal injuries, they might even live for a few days, or they might even survive.
“But if they’re coming to do you harm and you shoot them somewhere nonvital, it isn’t going to stop them fast enough. You might not get another chance. That means you will be dead and your death may be horrific.”
Angela looked down as she thought it over. She looked up.
“Well, if you put a bullet in their brain, that would stop all brain function. That would stop them.”
Her grandfather smiled. “Exactly. But the human skull is extremely thick. A twenty-two will penetrate that hard bone if the bullet strikes it at a right angle. But if it isn’t straight on, it’s liable to ricochet off the guy’s skull. You don’t have much time to stop him. If the bullet ricochets off, you may not get a second chance to put him down.”
He held his first two fingers in front of her eyes, one in front of each eye. He put his thumb on the tip of her nose.
“This area, this small triangle from eye to eye, to the tip of the nose, is the most vulnerable part of the human skull. If you put a twenty-two into that triangle, the bullet will easily enter the skull. It’s instant death.
“If a guy is coming at you and you put a bullet into that triangle it will destroy his motor function so fast that even if he’s pointing a gun at you, he won’t be able to pull the trigger.
“The base of the skull is another vulnerable spot. Assassins often shoot a person at the base of skull in the back. It destroys the medulla oblongata. It’s lights out. But it’s virtually impossible to shoot someone there if they’re attacking you. The ear is another vulnerable spot, but neither of those spots do you much good if you are being attacked head-on.